Mammography, perceptions and actual - food for thought

Here we go again!

I don't even understand what it's trying to portray

I attended a routine mammogram and they found a tiny tumour - way too small to have been felt by me or anyone else - but tiny as it was, it was of a highly aggressive type and had already breached the initial safety margin removed in surgery. Without the mammogram, it would have remained undetected until it had spread to other organs that would have meant it's presence became 'felt'.

No-one will ever convince me that mammograms are a waste of time (or, more likely argument, resources).

Holly there was a thread some time ago which tried to say preventive medicine was a waste of time, resources, not cost effective. This thread will doubtless go the same way unless common sense prevails.

I'm not hanging round to read any more ......

Aka - I haven't seen that thread but thank you for explaining.

Having hung around various forums for many years these arguments against this, that or the other tend to rear their heads once governments start to claim poverty - up until that point, everyone was proud of the advances in science and medicine; go figure that one!

I'm a breast cancer survivor too (fingers firmly crossed) and I will carry on having mammograms, cervical smears etc at every opportunity.

Every so often someone decides that we are a lot of statistics, and that if they just tell us that it is not cost-effective to diagnose our cancer in time, we will obediently sacrifice our statistically insignificant lives.

We beg to differ.

I have been having mammograms for 23 years and will continue to do so, even when I have to book them myself.

Siddhartha Mukherjee writes in his book 'The Emperor of all Maladies' about this. He tells of identical twins and breast cancer. One always had mammograms regularly and, when a tiny lump was detected, underwent surgery and chemotherapy. The other one refused to have mammograms and went to her doctor only when she detected a lump herself. The outcome with both these, almost identical, tumours was exactly the same, but the first one had had more stress and more unpleasant treatments. He too said the benefits were small. In fact, almost the same as those in the diagrams.

But did the second, who had not had the mammograms, also have surgery and chemotherapy? Once the cancer was discovered (by mammogram or by the patient finding the lump) was the treatment just the same?

My small lump was found by mammogram. It was removed, and I had no chemo or radiotherapy. Nearly ten years later, I am still cancer-free. If I had not found it until it was bigger and had perhaps spread, I would have had far more stress and unpleasant treatments than I did have.

Yes, I don't understand that point either, Experigran, unless you're saying both women died, but the second twin didn't have any treatment...

The treatment was the same and they both at the same time.

So the only difference was that one had her boobs squashed regularly and the other did not? No extra medication or surgery? Mammograms are briefly uncomfortable, but can be survived and are not invasive.

And if the second twin's cancer had been deeper into the mammalian tissue, or her breasts had been naturally lumpy and bumpy and lulled her into a false sense of safety ("It's just the underlying milk ducts still") she would not have detected it as soon as the mammogram would have.

What caused the first twin so much more stress, and what unpleasant treatments did she have that her sister didn't? It doesn't make sense to me.

I still don't care - these stories crop up from time to time, as do the ones about the person who smoked forty a day and lived to be one hundred. I didn't like chemotherapy one bit, but am grateful for the outcome.

Very grateful, and, like anno will pay for mammograms when I reach her age

It depends whether you prefer to know as soon as possible about a medical malfunction and do something about it at once, or stay in blissful ignorance until you are up against it.

I know which I prefer.

I suppose I should explain myself a bit more. I'm not against screening, far from it, and go for mammograms and happily take part in the annual BC screening etc. I paid to have annual mammograms when I lived in SA.

My resistance, if that is what it is, stems from the fact that from time to time I feel slightly overwhelmed by the thought or suggestions all the things that are out to stalk us, and the constants "tests" to "pass", the wait for the letter in the post, it would be much better if you could be told then and there. Others on here have expressed the same experiences.

So, a bit of perspective and expressing a balanced view is not a bad idea.

If I had had an early cancer detected by a screening programme, I would probably be a complete convert and first in the queue.

The first twin's stress started much sooner and the results were the same. It suggested, as does the diagrams in the OP, that finding the lump sooner made very little difference and X-rays in themselves may escalate the problem.

I find mammogram appointments often crop up at the wrong time. Like just before Xmas so that the stressing comes in the run-up and spoils things somewhat. That is a bummer. But I do go.

Surely it's about our perceptions of what happens with or without mammograms.
We think that a lot more women die from breast cancer than really do, whether they have mammograms or not.
We think that 80 women per thousand who have mammograms die of cancer, where in reality only four per thousand die.
We think that twice as many die from breast cancer when they have not had mammograms, whereas the same number die.
Does thinking this way frighten us into having mammograms?

durhamjen no it doesn't frighten me into having mammograms, on the contrary I find it quite reassuring.

Yes, I've had all mine, Grannyknot. I was wondering if the research is a way of trying to change the way we think and justify the authorities in stopping mammograms.
My husband was diagnosed with cerebellar ataxia when he was sixty. From then until he died from brain cancer, he had lots of MRI and CT scans, really to see what changes there were in his brain. There was nothing anyone could do to alter the progression of the disease.
I have asked if the scans could have had anything to do with the brain cancer, and one radiologist said that he might have killed one extra person over the years he has been doing the scan. All the scans he had, and nobody found the brain tumour, possibly because they were not looking for it.
When we do not have mammograms, that's the risk we take, of being the extra one in one thousand that will die of breast cancer. It's the opposite of studying the brain.

I just got stopped from posting the last post by someone ringing up to speak to my husband!

Has there been any indication that 'the authorities' intend stopping mammograms?

Most lumps are found by the patients, or their partner, than by mammograms, but, as in some of the cases here, a mammogram would have been the only way to detect a lump in situ. (I used to be an Ambassador for CRUK, with a special brief for breast cancer)